Bitfinex CFO assures shareholders the $851 million in missing funds will be released in a “few weeks”

The CFO of Bitfinex assured key shareholders that the $851 million in missing funds revealed by the NYSAG lawsuit are in fact safe and will be accessible in a few weeks, per reporting by CoinDesk, which spoke with large Bitfinex shareholder Zhao Dong.

According to Dong, Bitfinex CFO Giancarlo Devasini personally assured him that the exchange only needs a few weeks to unfreeze the funds.

Earlier today Bitfinex issued an official response saying the “court filings were written in bad faith and are riddled with false assertions.” The company further denied the loss of $851 million from Crypto Capital and instead claimed the funds have been “seized and safeguarded.”

Another shareholder, Tian Jia, told CoinDesk that the exchange's executives have continued to communicate with shareholders, noting that they are working on resolving the issue.

“Because it is customers’ money, it’s not stolen cryptocurrency, it’s fiat. It can’t be stolen. It’s only frozen by the [regulators], and [Bitfinex is] trying to get it back by approaching Panama and the [U.S. Attorney General.] They have been communicating all along," Jia told CoinDesk.

Details from the suit paint a very different picture, with Bitfinex and Tether engaging in “undisclosed, conflicted transactions to cover Bitfinex’s losses by transferring money out of tether reserve funds.” According to the Attorney General’s office (OAG) at least $700 million was drained from Tether’s reserves to cover the funds that went missing.